Netwar at New College

In the conflict with the tyrannical powers at New College of California, alumni must unavoidably conduct a war of position — based on principle — while their bureaucratic enemy conducts a war of attrition. Essential to both in this asymetric conflict is the application of psychological warfare. The administration’s hired guns (consultants) are adept at this; we must be, too.

Due to the systematic purging of principled people from staff and faculty for three decades, the New College administration exerts concentrated power able to withstand occasional incursions by oversight agencies and cyclic disruptions by righteously indignant students. As an autocratic monolith, they thus can repeatedly choreograph soul-searching dramas and fraudulent reforms — as they have indeed done many times — manipulating the fears of a cowered faculty as well as the naivete of good-hearted students.

Our strength as alumni (and students) lies not in confronting the dictatorial monster on its own terms, but rather in exercising political influence based on netwar. How well we understand and practice this concept will determine who is left standing when the smoke clears.